GANGADHAR MAITY Vs. THE STATE OF WEST BENGAL

JUDGEMENT

(1.) These criminal appeals emanated from the judgment and order of conviction dated 16.02.2015 and 18.02.2015 passed by the Additional Sessions Judge, Fast Track Court, Haldia, Purba Medinipur in S.T. No. 48 of 2012 by which the learned trial court has convicted all the appellants under Sections 3(1), 4, 5(1), 6(1), 9(1) of Immoral Traffic Act and accordingly passed the order of sentence.

(2.) Being aggrieved at it and dissatisfied with the order of conviction the appellants convicts preferred following appeals:- (1) Criminal Appeal No. 154 of 2015 has been filed by Gangadhar Maity, (2) Criminal Appeal No. 155 of 2015 has been filed by Chitta Ranjan Roy and (3) Criminal Appeal No. 177 of 2015 has been filed by Gopal Hazra, Billapada Handel and Sukumar Bhunia. All the appellants before this court has been convicted by the order of the learned trial court on the basis of the same F.I.R., evidence and same judgment and, therefore, on consent, all these appeals are taken up for consideration being inter linked with each other. So this court has decided to dispose of all these appeals as aforesaid by a common judgment. The F.I.R. and the evidence of the prosecution would reveal a very sordid state affairs of the society. Young girls and destitute women had to submit themselves only to maintain their livelihood at the cost of their dignity, honour and chastity.

(3.) On the basis of source information, the C.I.D. personnel decided to work out the said information and conducted a raid in a hotel 'Manihar'. During the said raid and search, they had ascertained Chittaranjan Roy, is the owner of the said hotel-cum-brothel and engaged a good number of young girls and destitute women for sexual exploitation for his commercial gain. The said hotel was being run by the manager Gopal Hazra and some other staff. While they were conducting raid, some of the victims took shelter in another adjoining hotel popularly known as hotel 'Parashmani' owned by Gangadhar Maity. In course of conducting raid, they recovered 31 (thirty one) female sex workers, who were deployed by the aforesaid owners and managers. Some of them were minors and some of them were majors. During the raid, some documents were seized by the raiding party i.e. one attendance register, two electric bills, one Accounts books of daily marketing of hotel 'Manihar', five small note books, containing personal accounts of some victims, girls, sixty pieces of luxury condom and two strip of contraceptive pills, two bottles of black label beer, four pieces of blue film C.D., cash, one L.G. T.V. and one D.V.D. After interrogation it came to light that under some inducement and allurement by the accused persons, the victims came into their clutches and were compelled to have sexual intercourse with customers on payment. The manager used to take that amount from the customers and kept in with him and a very frugal amount were being paid to the victims. Ventilating the manner of search and seizure and the manner of conducting raid, Inspector of police C.I.D. has lodged the complaint against the present appellants and set the law into motion.